In this blog post, we are going to take a closer look at the Private Photo Vault app and review each of its functionalities to find out how easy it is to hide and lock your photos and videos in a secure vault.
Private Photo Vault is one of the best apps designed for Android and iOS devices to password-protect private photos and videos. The most notable aspect is the backup and sync functionality, which allows all your data to sync to a cloud vault and across your devices seamlessly. Moreover, it offers break-in reporting.
Letâs examine its functionalities and overall usability to see how it can ensure that your photos and videos are hidden securely behind a password-protected vault.
You can easily download the Private Photo Vault app for your phone using the links below.
Once downloaded, you can proceed to the next section, where we will guide you through the initial setup and share our experience with the app.
The Initial Setup
The first step is to set up a passcode. It will be required every time you open the app to ensure your photos remain private and out of everyone’s reach. Additionally, you will later be able to enable fingerprint for quick and seamless access.
Enter a backup email address, which will be used to regain access to your account if you ever forget your passcode. You can skip this step; however, you wonât be able to recover your photos.
Now, the app will request storage access, so you need to grant it to import the photos and videos into the private vault.
Thatâs how easy it is to set up your personal password-protected private photo vault.
Now that your vault has been set up, we will examine the app’s usability and functionality.
Usability and Functionality
In this section, we will explore the app’s functionalities and see how each feature is designed to hide photos and videos and protect privacy.
The moment you access your vault, the home page greets you with four tabs at the bottom: Albums, Favorites, Web, and Settings. Along with the â+â icon, you can use it to open the camera, import photos, and create a new album.
Continue reading as we will look into each of these sections.
Adding Photos and Videos to the Album
We will start with the Album section and try to import photos and videos. By default, here, you will find a âmain albumâ already created for you. You can begin by importing your photos and videos directly into this album, editing it, or even creating a new album.
Letâs start by quickly importing photos and videos into the vaultâs album. Itâs very simple.
- Tap the â+â icon and select import photos.
- From the list, select the photos and videos you want to import.
- Tap Import.
- You will see a popup message informing you that the selected photos will be removed from the original location and will be stored in the Private Photo Vault. This is to avoid duplication and to save storage space. Tap on Import to continue.
- A prompt for album selection will appear. You can import photos to an existing album or create a new one.
- Once completed, you will see an import complete popup message.
- You will see a popup asking whether you want Photo Vault to delete the imported photos and videos from the phone. You can either allow or deny. It is recommended that you allow it to ensure maximum privacy and avoid duplication.
Alternatively, you can use the built-in camera feature, which allows you to bypass storing photos in the phoneâs gallery and directly capture photos and videos from the vault and store them in a secure album.
Once the photos are in the vault, you can perform multiple actions, including selecting multiple photos, exporting them back to your phoneâs gallery, moving them to a different album for better organization, or even editing the photos.
Photos Editor
A built-in Photos Editor feature allows you to transform your photos without leaving the app. Letâs explore and see how powerful it is and what it enables you to do.
To access the editor, simply go to the album and open any photo you want to edit. In the top right corner, you will see the pencil icon; tap that to open the photo editor.
Once you are inside the photo editor, you can transform and modify your photo using tools like transform, filter, adjust, focus, sticker, text, overlay, frame, and brush.
Although these are just basic editing tools, they enable you to edit your photos without opening them in another app. Once you are done with the editing, you can simply store the photo within the vault.
The Web Browser
The Private Photo Vault comes with a web browser that allows you to securely browse the Internet and seamlessly download images and videos from websites and store them securely in the vault.
To download photos and videos, simply tap on the Web icon tab, which is located at the bottom of the menu. Here, you will see the address bar. You can type any website URL in there, privately browse the internet, and freely download any photo and video you want from the internet.
To download a photo, simply tap and hold the image until you see the âDownload Photoâ popup option. To download a video, open it in full-screen mode. You will see the download icon. Tap on it, and you will see a popup option that says âDownload Video.â Simply tap on it, and the video will be downloaded.
These downloaded videos and photos will be directly stored in your private vault in the dedicated âDownloadsâ album.
Premium Features
The app offers premium features that you can access through the subscription, which let you access the following features:
- Cloud Vault: Create a complete backup of your private albums, photos, and videos, enabling you to sync all the content between your connected devices for easy access on multiple devices.
- Unlimited Albums: This allows you to create unlimited photo albums, which is better for organizing your photos and videos into different sections rather than having one large album with all the media files.
- Ad-free Experience: Get rid of ads and enjoy a seamless ad-free experience.
- Wireless Photo Transfer: WiFi transfer allows you to wirelessly transfer photos from your phone to a computer if both devices are connected to the same WiFi network.
- Decoy Password: A privacy-focused feature that lets you set up a completely isolated section, which is only accessible through a decoy password. You can use this in those cases when someone becomes nosy and asks you for a password to see whatâs hidden inside the vault. Giving them a decoy password will provide them with access to that specific section only.
- Patter Lock and Fingerprint: This feature allows you to open the app using pattern lock and fingerprint instead of PIN lock.
- Break-in Report: Once enabled, whenever anyone tries to open the app and uses a wrong password, the app will capture a photo from the phoneâs front camera along with the phoneâs current GPS location.
- Face Down Lock: A brilliant feature that automatically hides the app and switches it with another app whenever you turn your phone face down. You can customize it to open the app of your choice.
- App Disguise: Although the feature has not yet been released, it lets you change the app’s default icon and replace it with any icon available within the settings menu.
Subscription Plans
If you want to unlock additional premium features, which we have highlighted above, you can opt for a subscription plan. The app offers two plans:
- Monthly Plan: $12.99 per month
- Yearly Plan: $35.99 per year (which means $2.99 per month)
If you are just starting out and donât know what to expect, you can simply opt for a free trial and test out all the features for yourself. This will help make it easier for you to make the final decision about whether to opt for a subscription or whether the free plan is sufficient for you.
Concluding Thoughts
Overall, the Private Photo Vault worked exactly as it was supposed to. The UI is simplified and easy to understand, and anyone can use it without spending time learning about it. One of the best and most notable features I loved the most about this app is that there is no way to recover the password, which means no one can attempt to bypass the password.
However, if you want it to be recoverable in case you forget it in the near future for any reason, then it is highly recommended that you connect the app to your email. This way, the app will give you the option to recover your password via email, which is indeed a handy tool.
Please share your opinions in the comments below and what you liked the most about the app.
